Tag: succeed with affiliate marketing

Week 8!

Traffic was on the menu again for me in Internet Profit‘s Quick Start Blueprint.  A lot of valuable learning there, and I’ll share a little with you here right now.

First, let’s talk traffic a little…

Traffic is a major pain point for many of us online marketers. It’s the lifeblood of a business, and yet it feels SO HARD to get when you’re first starting out online.

By “traffic”, we mean “people”, “eyeballs”… you can have the best content in the world, promote the best products ever – but it’s no good if no one sees it all.  Having a business without traffic is like dressing up amazingly sexy and staying home watching Netflix for the night (you’re highly unlikely to bring your dream date home for a wild night of passion if you stay home, even if you look amazing).

The fact is, traffic is hard to get when we start out online, because most of the time, no one knows us.  We need to build content first; in time, that content will get noticed if we do our job properly and we will gradually build influence. 

To give you an example, I can explain the process with YouTube, as that’s the platform I know best from my own experience:

• at first, no one knows about your YouTube channel
• you publish videos regularly, do your SEO properly and share your videos with people who need them
• these people watch them, and as the weeks go by, your videos start being found in search
• people who don’t know you at all start finding your videos in search and watching them
• YouTube then gradually starts suggesting your videos, which in turn means that more people who don’t know you see and watch your content
• as a result, you start being known for a certain type of content, and some people will come back to your channel regularly when they need your content
• the more people view your content, the more YouTube suggests it and the more traffic you have on your channel

It’s a fairly slow process and it involves building content first, that attracts people to you, because it gives them something they need.  When you’re starting out, you need to go out of your comfort zone and TELL people about your content – otherwise, no one will know it’s out there.  In time, the growth just happens organically.  

Traffic is so important, and at times it’s so hard to get… so anytime I see any information on traffic, I just consume it with passion!  Any tip or trick is always welcome, and I was really interested in Dean Holland’s approach to it all.

What’s Dean Holland’s approach to traffic?  

During my week 8, I learned a lot more about Dean’s approach to traffic.  Here’s what he suggests:

• pick one main free traffic method
• pick one quick paid traffic method
• learn one “premium” paid traffic method, until you master it

Here are a few more details in case you know nothing about traffic.

By free traffic, we mean traffic that we get organically.  It can be from YouTube videos, Facebook posts, blog posts, Instagram, TikTok videos, questions answered on Quora, etc.

There are no shortages of places where we can publish some kind of content and get free traffic.  We “pay” for it with our time.

By quick paid traffic, Dean means solo ads.  Solo ads are where you pay someone to send an email with your affiliate links in it.  Solo ads are fast and easy – but they’re expensive.

By premium paid traffic, Dean means paid traffic that you have to learn to master.  Facebook ads, YouTube ads or Google ads are examples of premium paid traffic.  It’s not just a question of sharing your affiliate link like with solo ads.  You have to learn paid traffic and it takes time as well as money.  But I believe that in the long term, it’s very profitable.

Dean’s approach is that we should do a mix of all three.

• We should get pick one platform where we build up content and get free traffic.
• We should pay for some solo ads, to get quick paid traffic and build up our list.
• We should take time to learn and master one source of premium paid traffic – this will allow us to grow and scale our business in the long term.

In my experience, this approach is quite unique.  I mean, I’m not saying that Dean is the only one to do it – quite the contrary!  I’m sure most experienced online marketers do it this way.  But what’s unique about Dean is that he teaches this from the start.

In other training programs, I’ve found that there was usually more of an “either/or” approach.  So either free traffic was painted as “the best” or paid traffic was “sold” as the golden option.  This is the first time I hear someone say: you need to be doing both, they go hand in hand.

This is new to me, but I’m determined to follow Dean’s advice.  I’ve been an organic girl so far, focusing heavily on YouTube with good results (that’s something I teach, by the way, if you’re interested you need to click here ?).

I ran solo ads once, without much to show for it, aside from a few leads.  At the time I knew nothing about how to do email follow-up properly, so I got no sales from it.

I did go through a great Facebook ads training at the very beginning of my online “career” in 2018.  I got some sales but then stopped because my budget was too tight at the time.

So really, my knowledge and experience with paid traffic is very limited, but I will learn!

If you’re a complete beginner…

I believe you’ll be at a great advantage starting with this strategy right away.  Learning to do both free and paid traffic from the start should bring faster results, in my opinion, and therefore encourage you not to give up.  So if you want to check Internet Profits out, just click here and get Dean Holland’s free training to start with ?

Oh, and I forgot! 

I made more sales this week!  So far, since joining Internet Profits, I have made $77.50.

Now here’s my live video progress report ?

See you soon for more adventures in week 9!

 

 

In week 7…

I continued to work through Internet Profit‘s Quick Start Blueprint and made good progress.  I finished setting up the basics of my blog (yes, this one lol!).  It’s not perfect and there’s still a lot of work to be done, but I have something now, at least. 

As I progress through Internet Profits, I like to stop regularly, and go through the pros and cons.

So… let’s do this right now.  Please note that this is my completely subjective experience – what I like, you might dislike – and vice-versa, what I dislike, you might find great!

The pros…

Internet Profits is undoubtedly a high quality product.  The training is clear, the steps to follow are broken down in small “chunks”; that makes it easy to take action, one step at a time.

I wish I’d had a course like that from the start, honestly.  I remember being so LOST when I began my journey in affiliate marketing.  If I’d had a step by step guide, I would have been more successful faster, I reckon.

Anyway, I think the first big pro of Internet Profits is this: it’s clear, simple and newbie friendly. 

Next, the course comes with an active and supportive community.  That’s worth a lot.  Have a question?  Feel stuck?  You can just post in the Facebook group, and you’ll get a reply, sometimes from Dean Holland himself.  I posted a question and Dean spent an hour, live in the Facebook group, answering it! 

Another HUGE pro is how “easy” Internet Profits is to promote.  Dean is the creator of “the ultimate funnel” – and it’s powerful.  Let me explain.  Internet Profits comes with a fantastic value ladder.  The first product you can get is a free book (if you click this link, you can get it for yourself). 

This book is full of valuable and helpful insights.  But the free book is just the first of a variety of useful products offered by Internet Profits.  From an affiliate’s point of view, it’s very “comfortable”.  Once you’ve offered the free book to your customers, they will be nurtured by Dean and his team; some of them will buy further products, create great businesses, and you will make good commissions in the process. 

Basically, Internet Profits allows you to make high ticket commissions, but not only.  It’s a lot easier to “sell” a free book than to sell a $2k course.   As an affiliate, it means that my focus can go on creating good content that attracts the audience who needs it.  I don’t need to waste energy on trying to sell a very expensive product.

The cons…  

I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: Internet Profits is not a “business in a box” quick fix kind of product.  If that’s what you’re looking for, then it’s not for you.  You will need time to set things up properly.  You will need to put in the work.

Now for me, maybe the biggest downside to Internet Profits is that it uses “promoting Internet Profits” as an example of how to set things up.  The Quick Start Blueprint teaches you how to set everything up to promote the course.  Which is great if you want to promote the course. 

But what if you want to be an affiliate for a different course?  Or in a different niche?

Affiliate marketing is not only promoting make money online courses.  Too many people forget that.  

I’m an affiliate for tools that help affiliate marketers on Facebook for example.  I know people who are affiliates for gardening systems, or kitchen appliances.  It all depends on your niche and area of expertise.

I would love for the course to teach beginners how to give an example of how to set things up in another niche. 

So – that’s my biggest criticism of the course.  And I decided that I would do a kind of “mini-course”, showing people how they would set things up to be an affiliate for something completely different than a make money online course!  I haven’t done it yet, but I will, I promise!  And I’ll give it away here, on this blog, for free, once it’s ready 🙂

That’s it for this week!

Just, before I go, quick sales check: since starting with Internet Profits, I have made $28.50.

And here’s my live video progress report ?

See you soon for my week 8 progress!

 

 

Week 6 and I hit a wall…

Yes, it happens to us all – I’m no exception.  And it just goes to show that even if you are making money, you’re going to go through some tough days (or weeks, or months).

It was all my fault, really. 

Here’s what happened: Internet Profits uses Builderall as it’s main funnel builder.  This is one of the things I don’t like so much about the course.

I have a kind of thing about Builderall: I don’t find it very intuitive or easy to use.  It’s probably nothing to do with what it’s really like – it’s just that I’m used to Clickfunnels, and kind of prejudiced against any other funnel building tool!

So anyway… instead of listening to my instinct and just carrying on with Clickfunnels (Internet Profits does share some Clickfunnels templates, so I could have done that), I decided to cancel it and try going with Builderall.

I’d already tried Builderall twice in the past – and didn’t like it.  Why I thought it would be different this time, I don’t know!  But there you go, I tried and wasted a ton of time trying to understand it all.

It meant changing stuff with my auto-responder too – and suddenly I went into a total panic, lol!  Because I realised the amount of work involved if I wanted to change all this…

So… after a few DAYS of tearing my hair out…

I reactivated my Clickfunnels account and simply imported one of the share funnels available for me in Internet Profits.

Silly of me really, I should just have done this in the first place!

Just goes to show: follow the course you buy, by all means, but please do take into account what you know already.  I am familiar with Clickfunnels and should just have trusted myself with this.

Sometimes, you must have the wisdom to know when NOT to follow the instructions given in a course.

Lesson learned!  

Once I was back in Clickfunnels, all was fine.  In no time, I had a great funnel set up – you can click here to check it out.  It’s just one of the many available in Internet Profits.  Dean Holland is very generous in sharing all his resources with affiliates.

So… all’s well that ends well!

As usual, I went live and recorded my progress (and frustration!).  Here’s the video for you ?

Next will be week 7 progress!

 

 

Week 5 in Internet Profits already!

Time flies, it’s crazy!  In week 5, I was still going through the Quick Start Blueprint – there are many videos there, and a lot to implement.  Internet Profits is not a business in a box, quick fix kind of product.  It gives you thorough training.  Even though I wasn’t a newbie when I started, I was determined to go through the training as if I was starting from scratch.  I wanted to feel what it would be like as a complete beginner. 

Anyway – so what happened this week?

TRAFFIC!

No, I’m not talking about anything shady here!  But we do talk a lot about traffic in affiliate marketing.  By “traffic”, we mean “people”.  You need people to see what you are offering, or you’ll never make sales, obviously.

This week I learned more about what Dean Holland calls the four core areas of focus. 

Dean teaches to focus on four main things:

1. Be where your audience is
2. Capture email addresses
3. Nurture the relationship
4. Make offers

This is very much what I knew already, but it was great to have it spelled out so clearly and it makes it easy to come up with a clear plan.

Basically, once you’ve chosen your niche, find out where your potential customers “hang out”.  Then produce content on that platform that will help them out.  Offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their email address.  Build a relationship of trust through email.  And finally, make offers that are going to help these customers. 

As simple as this may seem, this is where many affiliate marketers go wrong, mostly because they are not taught this properly.

Many fail because they are focused on only one or two of these.  I see many affiliate marketers skip steps 2 and 3 for example.  So when they make offers, they make no sales… because they haven’t built that relationship of trust yet.  For the whole cycle to “work”, you need all the elements in place.

Dean breaks it all down and makes it easy.  Seriously, if I’d had this training right from the start, I would be in a different place right now, I’m pretty sure.  Not that I’m doing badly – but I would be a 5 figure earner for sure already, if I’d had the right training from the start.

So if you’re a newbie and you want to learn affiliate marketing the right way, do yourself a favour and do it right from day one.  Just click here and listen to Dean’s free training.

But I’m digressing!  

There’s not a huge amount to report, apart from this, for this week.

On the sales front, I made another sale and I have now earned the princely sum of $28.50.

If you want to see proof of this, just click on the video below.  As usual, I went live to record my progress 🙂?

See you soon for week 6 news!

 

 

Week 4 in Internet Profits…

and I discovered how easy Dean Holland’s course makes it for his certified partners to get leads.

This week I went through more of the Quick Start Blueprint (as mentioned in week 3) and I discovered the video named “lead magnets”. 

Now before I tell you what gold I found there, let’s stop for a second on the topic of lead magnets…

“What on earth is a lead magnet, Sophie?”

you may be wondering…

So – lead magnets are an essential concept in affiliate marketing. 

They are also called “ethical bribes” at times. 

A lead magnet is something valuable that you offer for free, in exchange for someone’s email address. 

So, for example, if you are an expert in weight loss and you are selling a weight loss program, a lead magnet could be a simple pdf document with “5 simple ways to lose weight”. 

There are all kinds of lead magnets.  They can be as simple as a checklist or cheat sheet, and as elaborate as a free mini course.  It doesn’t have to be a “thing” – a lead magnet could be a free discovery call, or a free zoom work meeting for example.

The whole idea of a lead magnet is that it’s FREE, VALUABLE, and above all USEFUL to your audience.

It should be a no brainer for people to give you their email address.

Then, when you have the email address, you can follow up with an email sequence, building a relationship with the person.

Generally, we buy from those we know, like and trust.  It’s rare to buy right away.  This is where lead magnets are useful.  Someone might like your style, but not quite trust you enough to buy from you.  A lead magnet gives them the opportunity to “try you out”, without any financial risk.

Anyway – back to Internet Profits and my week 4!

I discovered that the course offers us several valuable done-for-you lead magnets, all ready for us to use as we want.  They are free books on different topics in the make money online niche.  We are free to rebrand them, reword them, use them as we think best.  The only thing we’re not allowed to do is share them with other online marketers for them to use as lead magnets themselves. 

If you want to check one out, just click this link and you’ll have it in your inbox in no time (warning!  I’ll then have your email address and you’ll get some mail from me ?… that’s how it works!).

It was a relief for me to discover all these lead magnets, ready for me to use!  I do create my own lead magnets regularly, but it’s always great to have some done-for-you resources.  It also struck me that for a complete beginner, this makes it very easy.  The last thing you want to be doing when you’re starting out with a new program, is to stress about creating good lead magnets.

“Any sales this week, Sophie?”

What do you think?  Go on, have a guess!

If you watch my video, you’ll find out about my results at minute 10… (here’s a hint: it’s good news ?)

Here’s my week 4 progress for you ?

See you soon for week 5 updates!